Fort Sam to train response team

New York Times

October 19, 2014Updated: October 19, 2014 10:50pm

The Pentagon announced Sunday it is assembling a 30-person rapid-response team that could provide quick medical support to civilian health-care workers if additional cases of the Ebola virus are diagnosed in the U.S. The team will get specialized training at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, according to a news release. The team will consist of 20 critical-care nurses, five doctors trained in infectious disease, and five trainers in infectious-disease protocols.

The Department of Health and Human Services asked for the team, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Hospital apologizes

The head of the group that runs the Texas hospital under scrutiny for mishandling an Ebola scare apologized in full-page ads in local Dallas newspapers, saying the hospital “made mistakes in handling this very difficult challenge.”

Barclay E. Berdan, chief executive of the Texas Health Resources, which operates a network of 25 hospitals here, said in an open letter that hospital officials were deeply sorry for having misdiagnosed symptoms shown by Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was sent home after his first visit to the emergency room of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital but was later readmitted and then died of Ebola two weeks later.

Future Ebola cases, if any, will be transferred to one of three national hospitals with recognized top-level containment units: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland; or St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana.

Revised guidance for health care workers treating Ebola patients will include using protective gear “with no skin showing,” a top federal health official said, and the Pentagon announced it was forming a team to assist medical staff in the U.S., if needed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said those caring for an Ebola patient in Dallas were vulnerable because some of their skin was exposed. Two nurses at the Dallas hospital contracted Ebola.

Quarantine ends

As Duncan lay dying of Ebola in a Dallas hospital bed, his girlfriend Louise Troh battled loneliness and fear that she too had contracted the disease while confined to a stranger's home under armed guard.

Troh's confinement ended Sunday, along with several friends, family and others who had contact with Duncan after he first became infectious. Ebola has a 21-day incubation period, and the people who interacted with Duncan after he first arrived in Dallas from Liberia will be in the clear.

Cruise ship returns

In the end, there never was any risk of the Ebola virus aboard what became known as the Ebola Cruise. Last week, the announcement that a passenger on the Carnival Magic cruise ship out of Galveston was a Dallas lab supervisor who had handled an Ebola patient's sample transformed a weeklong Caribbean jaunt into a high-seas drama showcasing anxieties over the spread of the virus.